Military and Synthetic Fibres
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016
Where in the world do the military clothes go? Like that old Carmen San Diego song…
It would seem ironic, but fitting, that the industry devoted to the defense of a nation and to aggress upon other nations would imply that the men and women in uniform would be contributive to the major devastation on the planet.
Perhaps, we can call this a covert, and unacknowledged, war on the planet, which contributes to climate change or global warming, pollution of the water and environment through the addition of synthetics, man-made, fibres aka “non-biodegradable materials” or just Ice Cube – in the biz (who did use the word biodegradable in some lyrics, in unrelated news), into the landfills and the oceans. Can we declare a war on that, too? You betcha. So how about a war on the war on the environment? But it’s covert. Okay, how about an overt war on the covert war on the environment? That’s enough of that.
That’s the question I want to ask with respect to the military and it’s clothing. In fact, it has to do a lot with the recycling cycle for the synthetic fibres or the man-made fibres, and the massive amount of men and women of uniform that wear clothing that is built to withstand to the pressures of combat, particular pressures of combat, that can result in clothing that is a very resistant to bio-degradation simply because they’re synthetic, which is the aforementioned issue.
One of the main fibres for military application came from World War II on December, 1941, where the War Production Board stated all nylon production is permitted for military use. Nylon even replaced Asian silk for the material used to produce parachutes. That’s pretty cool. I think there’s a sort of domino effect, where the purchase of one type of fibre begins to cascade throughout an industry – whether some small area or the military at large, just idle speculation.
Take, for instance, the extension into other military supplies, ponchos, ropes, tents and ties – and even for the production of higher-quality American currency. And so, since this the outset of the war, cotton has ruled as a dominant fibre – as more than 80% of the fibres used turn out to be cotton.
Even up to the present, specialized combat fires are needed for the strenuous wear and tear of combat and environmental pressures on them, all of this is not to say that don’t do cool things. In fact, the current forms of combat units and military clothing, and fibres throughout military applications, are pretty remarkable.
Let’s take one particular example call Aramid, those kinds of fibres are a particular class of strong heat resistant synthetic fibres that have use in the aerospace and military applications. Early experiments the 1990s, in vitro experiments, showed that it had some of the same affects on particular cells in the body as did asbestos, this raised the carcinogenic implications of the clothing, possibly, to the wearer. In other words, it can, does, or did have serious effects on human body based on being worn since the 1990 research showed some of this.
Although, there was a further research into 2009 that did show that inhaled particulate matter of this kind of fibre did not pose a particular threat to the body because it could be quickly cleared from the body. Nonetheless, it does have a large use within the military, and in general, because it’s general output is within the 40,000 to 50,000-ton range possibly more.
So, that’s a little look into the military and fibres. Bear in mind, especially when Uncle Sam wants you, as one of the most generalizable rules of thumb or heuristics for comprehension between the synthetic, or man-made, fibres and the nature fibres deals with decomposition. If a fibre can decompose, then it’s, typically, natural; if it cannot, it’s, typically, synthetic or man-made. And that means the military is contributive to the non-biodegradable material pollution in the environment.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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